Games in Early Design Education

Dr Rob Woodbury, Dr Susan Shannon and Mr Tristan Sterk
Department of Architecture

In design studios students have traditionally designed manually at the drawing board and on the modelling bench, utilising skills of inventing, manipulating and describing form to move towards a design solution which satisfies the requirements of the project. For those students who lack confidence and skill in form-making, their inability to invent, manipulate and describe form is a debilitating handicap leading to frustration and disillusionment.

We have developed a game-based, computer simulation curriculum that bypasses these difficulties. Students develop the ability to successfully apply learned theories about composition to forms in an enjoyable, low-risk

collaborative learning environment that allows them to more readily express their creative intent. This then builds confidence in beginning learners who all too often lack the skills initially to invent or manipulate form, or to express their ideas graphically.

In developing the games which form the basis for the teaching and assessment tasks in this subject, we thought that incorporating the "play" which is associated with "games" captured and developed an important essence of "good" designing: as something intrinsically engaging, both bounded and free, and open-ended.

Aims

• to foster greater confidence and competence in students in the early parts of their design education
• to free students from the constraints of their hand-drawing skills limitations so that they could better develop and convey their designs
• to engage students with design as both playful and serious
• to introduce basic design considerations in an engaging and light-hearted way

Process

Computer Aided Teaching

In order to play the games a substantial facility with a computer-aided design package is required. We chose Form•Z as the program. We introduced it to the students in Semester 1 through structured teaching in CAD 1, a compulsory Level 1 semester length subject which brought students into the computer aided teaching suite (CATS) for 3 hours every week. The 10 exercises used in CAD 1 have game-like aspects of their own, as an introduction to the pairing of CAD and games play.

In the CAT suite everyone can see everyone else's screen, and also "click" onto any one else's submitted work in the class. This produced a collaborative learning environment that contributed enormously to the skills the students developed. This phenomenon was unfortunately illustrated by a student whose residence was some distance from campus and who habitually worked at home and was not connected to the Internet. His work eventually suffered because he lacked the intrinsic and explicit knowledge that was common currency for the students regularly interacting in the CAT suite and through the website.

The games were designed to gradually introduce students to more complex design considerations. The 5 games: Symmetry-Asymmetry; Figural Space; Balance and Contrast; Solid, Void and Hierarchy; and Narrative which were developed for the 5 Tutorial Exercises in the Design and Form 1B subject all draw on rule-based play to initiate student form-making. The rules are the geometric concepts underlying these games.

While the latter games are complex, this is no impediment to displaying expertise in creating the figural space images. This is the enabling power of CAD game playing. The majority of beginning design students would not have the hand-drawing skills to compose views of their figural space game solution.

Assignments and assessments

The final two assignments progressed students skills at compositions by asking them to create a holistic designed environment in which there was an experiential brief as well as a compositional brief. The assignments provided an opportunity for students to amalgamate the compositional strategies they had developed in the games playing and restate these strategies in a more complex built environment. There were "rules" for the compositions which closely mirrored the type of rules introduced for the tutorials.

The critical evaluation of whether form-making strategies can be learnt and refined through self-directed, structured play with form-making games is largely a result of looking at the outcomes from these two final assignments where students are required to compose structures with strong compositional strategies, but structures which also have other functions, as well as show through a narrative how they came to these final designs, and furthermore to be able to write reflectively about their process and outcome.

The Design and Form website (inactive, 31/1/03) has course materials, assignments and examples of the students' work.

The student who created this child's play space reflects on the design: http://practical.cats.adelaide.edu.au/arch/DFIb_99/assignments/Composition/plwinen
(inactive, 31/1/03)

For the learning goals and assessment criteria for the nightclub exercise:
http://practical.cats.adelaide.edu.au/arch/DFIb_99/assignments/Night_club/ (inactive, 31/1/03)
Powerpoint examples of the students' submitted work is in the left frame.

Evaluation

A comment from a student on the structure of the subject reads:

"It's the most enjoyable, relaxed [subject], but the work is fun to do . . . ".

This comment supports the assertion that the games are fun to play. Another commented on the use of games in the tutorials:

"Games in Tutorials helped really understand what we were doing (not only how)."

Our observations and formal assessments support the view that most students are very competent with formal compositional strategies for students at the end of their first year, and that they are competent with the form-making tool Form•Z as a means to game play. Using this tool they are able to model what they imagine, they are able to refine and manipulate forms and to create a polished outcome.

*Games in Early Design Education benefited from a CUTSD grant. 

Contact
Rob Woodbury can be contacted on:

Tel: +61 8 8303 4590,
Fax: +61 8 8303 4377

E-mail: rob.woodbury@adelaide.edu.au (inactive 25/2/04)
Adelaide University, Australia 5005

last updated 2/8/01